


Snow, Late February

by melforbes



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-09 20:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8911240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: He drives her home from chemotherapy. Based on mulderswaterbed's beautiful headcanon. All credit to Jan Brett for the italicized text at the end.





	1. Chapter 1

“Do you mind if I stay for a little while?”

The request was modest; with the snow outside, she knew that the roads wouldn’t be clear, and after riding with him in other storms, she figured not to send him on his way just yet. Her stomach heavy with nausea, her heartbeat pounding against her temple, she leaned into the door-jamb of her apartment, motioned lethargically for him to come in. 

Though he’d originally offered to sit with her during her chemotherapy, she’d deflected and asked him to drive her home instead; while she sat in that dreadful ward with all the other dreadful people undergoing the same dreadful treatment as she, she didn’t want him to see her lurch with nausea, didn’t want him to watch as she kept her eyes downcast and away from the women who were far deeper into treatment than she was. Then again, were any of these people worse off than she was? The stage 3′s and the stage 2′s, though they might’ve undergone more chemo, still had some chance, didn’t they? She, however, was done, a lifer surrounded by two- or ten-year sentences. Scoffing herself, she forcibly remembered what her sister had always preached: _comparison is unfair, Dana_. 

But everything was unfair, from how her bones ached to the way her mother looked at her nowadays; Scully was tired of making rule of the world, of figuring out how it worked, for all of her scientific and religious measurements seemed not to fit her cancer. Though she objectively knew its theoretical cause, she still couldn’t find proper causation behind it, some action she did that forced her life to turn to this. Scientific or sinful, she couldn’t understand it. 

As he walked in quietly, flicked a light or two to her headache’s chagrin, he found his way to the couch, picked up the television’s remote. 

“What are you in the mood for?”

 _Bed_ , she thought. _Alone._ But as she looked out her window, saw the fat flakes of snow still falling even though it was late February, she knew he would be staying quite a while. 

“I’m going to...” she trailed off as her stomach heaved. “I need to get out of these clothes. I’ll be right back.”

“Ooh, so I get to pick?” He turned to HBO, something she needed to stop subscribing to given her work schedule. And given everything else. With that, her stomach lurched. 

She barely made it to the bathroom before she was violently sick, her body collapsing around the toilet, her legs splaying awkwardly and unusably. Feeling as though her ankles were tied together, she coughed and coughed, each movement sending shooting pains up her spine; she could see stars wherever she looked, so mostly, she kept her eyes closed, her hair falling into her face, tears trailing down her cheek before she could notice they’d formed. She cursed in her mind, knew she looked a mess even though the visual pain couldn’t compare to the internal, and as she felt the nausea pass, she leaned back against the tub, then slid down toward the floor. Cool tiles. Pressing her face farther into them, she felt the pain in her forehead calm just in the areas that touched the cold, so she held herself against the floor, the hot dampness on her cheeks a disheartening contrast to the white tile below.

In the ward, there was a woman, about her age maybe, but a mother unlike her. This woman, she was pretty, the kind of brunette-pretty of a schoolteacher or a childhood friend; she was pure in unfathomable ways, held a lightness of spirit that made even the old and ragged feel at ease, baked cookies and cried during _Steel Magnolias_ and went to yoga classes five times a week. And now she had breast cancer, stage three. While Scully had pretended to read a book, she watched as this woman’s presumed husband brought their little daughter in - a girl remarkably like her mother, same eyes and face, more tenacity and a ferocious excitement for this world - to see her mother, and while the woman sat there, dwarfed by blankets and a headscarf, arms lined with tubes, the little girl sat on her lap, told Mama all about how she and Daddy went to the park, yes, that one they used to all go to together as a family! And how she went on the swings, and she met this nice boy, Mikey, and _it was so much fun, Mama, I wish you could have come!_ And the woman was strong for the girl, hugged her too-tight and told her how much she loved her, but once the girl was out of the room, the woman collapsed into her husband’s arms, all unabashed tears and messy emotions, anger seeping from her pores, a simultaneous wish for death and for life coming from her lips. All the while, he held her, soothed her, stayed with her like that for many hours. By the time Mulder came to pick Scully up, the woman had still been crying, her sobs dry and wretched, her body so depleted that feeling took too much energy. 

And now, Scully’s body was doing the same thing, only she wasn’t being held, and her nearest family looked at her as though she were a ghost, and Mulder was in the other room madly oblivious while she gripped at the floor, its cool touch her only salvation. Years ago, she’d told herself to get out there more, that she would regret never letting anyone in, but it always was safer, she knew, to have one foot out the door, to have a Plan B, to make an escape route for when things went sour. Her education, her job, her independence, all of them were her ways to ensure that she never needed to rely on another, but now, all three had been taken from her in some capacity. Maybe she should’ve gone on that date, or seen a movie with that college friend, or at least tried to go out on one of the many Saturday nights she’d had since starting at the Bureau. Her life had been about her, only her, and that had been gratifying at the time, but she was gone now, a dead woman walking; only too late had she realized that one’s life wasn’t defined by their accomplishments but by the heart they’d shown to those around them, and right now, her heart was locked in a bathroom, the aroma of vomit surrounded it. _How poetic_ , she thought without humor, _that I’ll die a mediocre woman_.

“Scully?”

She tensed, her body rigid and painful against the floor; he couldn’t see her like this, not after she steeled herself while leaving that crying woman, not after she breathed through her nausea on the drive home, not after she dismissed his concerns with easy slight-of-hand. If he saw her like this, he would never look at her the same way again, and if the cancer didn’t kill her first, that would.

“Hey, _Independence Day_  is on,” he said, opening the bathroom door - _shit_ , she hadn’t locked it, why hadn’t she locked it? “If you’re up to it, I’d love to watch it. Have you seen it yet? It’s probably-”

He interrupted himself, so she figured he’d seen her, the bathroom dark and acrid, her face pressed so fervently to the floor that she knew it would be bruised come morning. Hearing him walk over, she tightly shut her eyes, felt like a child once more; by the time she opened them, she would realize that this had all been a dream, that she’d made it all up in her head, that nothing was wrong. She heard him flush the toilet, then sit down alongside her. 

“You know, if you wanted to audition to be a body on _NYPD Blue_ , there are much easier ways to do so.”

And at that, she laughed, genuinely laughed, her nose jamming into the tiles, her silty stomach even complying for the moment; she curled inwardly with the comment, brought her teary face into her hands while he lay down beside her. Softly, he pulled her hands away, looked at her genuinely; she wondered how much trouble those big blue eyes had gotten him out of as a child, their color bright within the greyscale of her dark bathroom. 

“How’re you feeling?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

“How do you think?” she deadpanned. 

“I meant how _specifically_ are you feeling,” he said. 

She sighed, said, “Headache, nausea, pain. The usual.”

“What helps?”

She furrowed her brow, so he nodded once in understanding.

“Not up for dinner?”

Her stomach turned, so she closed her eyes sharply. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said. “I think _101 Dalmatians_ is on too. If you want to lie down watching that, I’m game.”

“Screens make my head worse,” she said, remembering how she spent her first evening after chemo watching _Annie Hall_ with her mother and trying to mentally talk herself through the pain. 

“Okay, no screens,” he said with a nod. “What about a book?”

“I’m sorry, Mulder,” she said, exhaling deeply. “I’m really not in the mood for something like that. I’m exhausted.”

Sighing, he admitted, “I don’t want you to go to bed like this.”

She huffed a humorless laugh; it wasn’t as though there were a different way for her to go to bed. 

“What about a bath?” he offered.

She closed her eyes, said, “I don’t have the energy.”

“I’ll help you,” he insisted, so she felt her heart clench.

“Mulder, I-”

“I won’t make it a thing,” he said defensively. “I just....”

He trailed off, but she could complete the sentence for him: _want you to be okay_. More for him than for herself, she gave in with a nod that wrenched her spine, so he stood slowly, moved one of her hands to cover her open ear. Puzzled, she looked up at him, but when he started the water for the tub, she understood, pressed her hand harder over that ear to suppress the noise. 

“Warm?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said. 

While the tub filled, she slowly sat up, her stomach calming for the moment; her spine burned, and her headache was unrelenting, but thankfully, she could breathe again. He stood so tall and stalky above her, his work-clothes still on, his stance so casual that she wondered if he’d already forgotten the past few minutes. Once the tub was full, he asked, “Do you need help getting in?”

“No,” she said, but before she could stand, he asked again.

“Do you not want help, or do you not need help?”

“Mulder.”

“Please be honest with me.” He held genuine concern, absolutely no pity.

“I can do it, I swear.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding once for confirmation. “I’ll be right back then, okay?”

As he stepped out of the bathroom, she leaned on the tub so that she could stand; though she felt light-headed, she knew she could power through, so she unzipped her pants, pulled off her shirt, stood naked and awkwardly, felt like a foreigner in her own bathroom. Stepping into the water, she couldn’t remember the last time she had a bath, so she eased in, the warmth cozy around her stomach, the pain in her spine calming down. She let out a long, luxurious breath; goodness, he’d been right that she needed this.

When he returned, he came in with a stack of books, his eyes downcast; he never snuck a peek, and though part of her was thankful for that boundary, another part of her wished he would stare at her with thrilling amazement. She didn’t want the last person to ever see her naked to be some doctor she barely knew.

“You said no screens,” he said, setting the stack down next to the sink, “so I brought these.”

Looking the stack over, she saw that they were the picture books she’d kept around for whenever her nephew came to visit; mostly, those just took up space on her already-crowded shelves, but now, she was glad to see them.

“Quite a library you’ve got in there,” he said as he sat down alongside the tub, his head level with hers. “Interesting selections.”

Lethargically, she asked, “Interesting?”

“Not sure which is the bigger mystery, the Russian copy of _The Idiot_ or _Accounting for Dummies_.”

“Why? You don’t think I can speak Russian?”

“No, I just know you’re not a dummy.”

Softly, she smiled while he picked up the first book. 

“ _The Mitten,_ ” he read off of the cover. “A Ukrainian folktale. Very detailed illustrations.”

“I don’t remember that one.”

He turned to the first page, showed her a grand illustration of a boy hopping through the snow. She could remember winters like that, all post-California, her clothes soaking wet by the time her mother hurried her and her siblings inside. In the morning, she figured there would be a few new inches all around them, and though she knew she wouldn’t feel well enough, she wondered idly if they might go out in it, if they might take a little walk and embrace it for what it was. Despite how she didn’t want to ask, she hoped he would stay the night.

“ _Once, there was a boy named Nicky who wanted his new mittens to be made from wool as white as snow,_ ” Mulder narrated slowly while she canted toward him, while the steam rising from the tub eased her mind. 

“White mittens aren’t a good idea when it comes to children and snow,” she said softly, tiredly. “He’ll lose them.”

“When you go to movies with people, do you spoil the endings?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Anyway,” Mulder continued while she laughed lightly, the warm water shifting over her diaphragm, “ _at first, his grandmother, Baba, did not want to knit white mittens_  - see, Scully? - _’If you drop one in the snow,’ she warned, ‘you’ll never find it.’_ ”

Gingerly, he turned the page, looked to her as he did so; his gaze modest, he met her eyes and caught her smiling, so he smiled back. 

“ _But Nicky wanted snow-white mittens,_ ” Mulder pressed on, “ _and finally, Baba made them. After she finished, she said, ‘When you come home, first, I will look to see if you are safe and sound, but then, I will look to see if you still have your snow-white mittens,’ so off Nicky went, and it wasn’t long until one of his new mittens dropped in the snow and was left behind._  Kind of a predictable plot, you know?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Keep reading,” she insisted, so he turned the page and continued.


	2. Chapter 2

He fluffed her pillow as she entered her bedroom, the sheets pulled back for her. After brushing her teeth, she'd popped a pain pill to help her sleep, and now, as she watched him unfold her bed, she felt relief kick in. Quietly, she climbed in while he turned off her overhead lights, and in mere moments, she was close to sleep, her wretched body relaxing into the warm blankets, her mind slowing as her headache eased; she felt so tired that passing out at seven pm on a Saturday was all too easy.

In the living room - _her_  living room - he stood awkwardly, didn't know where he was allowed; because she'd refused dinner, he'd gone hungry, but what in her fridge could he eat now? Some part of him dreaded opening its door, didn't want to know what kind of Scully Food was in there. Vanilla nonfat yogurt, he figured. The world's biggest bag of salad greens, no romaine lettuce in sight because, as she'd told him on many occasions, that stuff's mostly water. Unseasoned chicken breasts, both cooked and uncooked. An ironic box of pork lo mein from five days ago. Almond milk, unsweetened.

Though he'd been to her place plenty of times before, he'd never been asked to stay over, not until tonight; with the way she'd asked, the soft-spoken and vulnerable tone she'd given, he said yes without thinking it through, without realizing what gravity this could have between them. However, he would've worried about her all night had he gone back to his own apartment, would've concocted stories about how she blacked out during a nosebleed and hit her head on something, would've called her at two in the morning with some dumb excuse to hear her voice. _Hey, Scully, sorry to wake you, but you know Nazca Lines? Like, have you heard of them? Oh, no reason, no case, I just wanted to know. Sorry about the hour. How are you feeling? Any better? Scully?_

Her couch was comfy in a frilly kind of way, covered in ornate pillows that gave it a relaxing softness; the television played the ending of _Independence Day_. Eventually, he would probably mute the TV and try for sleep, but nowadays, he often couldn't sleep, thought and thought until the sun rose again instead. Once his stomach got the better of him, he milled over to her fridge, opened it with emotional force.

To his disdain, the bland chicken and piles of yogurt-cups were absent; in their wake were probiotic pills, prescription pills, fortified protein shakes...that was it. Sure, there were mustard and mayonnaise - light mayonnaise because this was Scully, whose health had always been a priority though her cholesterol had been high since she was nineteen - but otherwise, the food in there was remarkably inhuman, like something you fed your dog after it had a surgery. That thought alone sobered him.

And she was asleep, so he took his keys and wallet, headed down to the nearest mini-mart, the snow falling quickly and silently as he walked; while blustering winds nipped at him, he figured he should've worn a warmer coat. Bagels, mini-donuts, eggs, bacon - turkey bacon, which almost physically hurt him to opt for instead, her voice nagging him in his mind, _it tastes better because it's more lean_  - he tried to think of her diner-orders from their many all-American road trips together. Because he figured she would need it in the morning, he picked up Gatorade, saltine crackers, and that ginger ale that came in glass bottles and had real ginger in it. He bought real food as well, some carrots and celery and vegetable stock, threw in a bag of spinach for good measure. Of course, she needed bread - what did the BRAT diet stand for again? - so he grabbed a loaf of whole wheat. Checking out, he realized that all of this food would make a sizable dent in his paycheck, but he didn't care, not so long as it meant her fridge would be full again.

Back at her apartment, he lined the food into her fridge, spaced everything out so that the shelves seemed whole again. He admired his work, then took a bagel out for himself, the dinner half-assed but a dinner nonetheless. Sitting down on the couch, he watched the credits of _Independence Day_ , genuinely wondered if she'd ever seen the movie. _It doesn't matter,_  he thought with an almost smug kind of satisfaction; _I can always ask her in the morning._

* * *

In the dark, he woke suddenly, his hands feeling for a gun that wasn't at his hip; as he looked up in the half-lit living room, he saw her there in a thick bathrobe, her motions tired as she poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen. He quieted, adjusted position on the couch; one of these cushions was putting a crick in his back.

"Oh, sorry," she whispered, glancing over to him. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"No problem," he said, then reached for the remote so that he could turn off the muted TV. Though it was only midnight, he'd passed out anyway. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," she said, not out of deflection but as a genuine statement; he nodded to himself, tried to quiet the relief he felt.

"Is your headache gone?"

"Yeah, mostly."

She sipped from the glass, leaned against the counter for support. He could remember days when she walked unwaveringly in heels as though they were mere extensions of her own feet, but then again, he could also remember evenings in hotel rooms during which she would kick off her gel-padded pumps and put her feet up before he could even unlock his own room's door. _Still Scully,_  he reminded himself, _always Scully._

"I took a pill before bed," she said, her face half-away from him. "Just for the pain, though. It's helping."

"Good, good."

From the couch, he didn't know what his position here was, didn't know which boundaries to maintain; though he wanted to walk over to her and warm her cold body in his arms, he knew that such a gesture would be an overstep, but he felt too far away on the couch, felt too casual and too detached. Because it was only midnight, he ventured an ask, "Are you heading back to bed?"

"Yes, I think so," she said softly.

"Are you hungry?" he asked as he stood up slowly.

She grimaced, said, "Not particularly. Just a little dehydrated."

"I, um..." he stammered. "I went out and bought you crackers and ginger ale, if you can manage either of those."

Her hand stilling against her glass, her eyes downcast and unreadable, she took a deep breath, left him with a suddenly-rushing heartbeat. Was that wrong of him to do? Shit, what if she already had some on hand? After all, he'd only checked her fridge, not her cabinets. Why on earth would he do such an impulsive thing? And Scully, _damn it_ , she held her independence so dearly, and whenever someone tried to take care of her, he could see defeat in her eyes, so why had he gone against her wishes? Why had he insistently done something even though it could upset her? _You should leave,_  he told himself while she slowly looked up at him. _She doesn't want you here. She just wants to be alone. You're only going to make this worse for her._

"I..." she trailed off as she stared him down, her gaze surprised but also blank in a way that made him wish he could read her mind, understand her hidden emotions. "Thanks. But I can't."

"Okay," he deflated.

"I'll just...."

She started back toward her bedroom, her socked feet slow across the room while he stared at his own bare ones. Though reading to her had felt so natural, so easy and right, he knew that their current moments required an elaborate tango in which neither of them could keep proper time; she didn't know how to be sick, and he didn't know how to take care of someone, so instead, she fumbled for her bedroom's knob while he watched in uncomfortable silence. When he didn't hear her open the door, his brow twitched, and he wanted to look up but dared not do so.

"Would you like to come in for a moment?" she asked.

In another life, he could picture them both as some lovers who had met in a bakery and were just finishing their first date; while snow like the kind outside fell around them, he took her home, and as her nose reddened in the brisk winter air, she proposed the same, _come in and stay for a little while._  Looking up at her - in this world, the real world, or at least _his_  real world - he saw a quiet honesty in her eyes, a simultaneous strength and vulnerability; though Dana Scully thrived inside her minuscule emotional comfort zone, she'd offered him a chance to leap out with her nonetheless.

"Sure," he said, for he understood what such an ask meant for her. He decided not to think about how exciting it was to follow her into her bedroom despite the circumstances and even though he'd been in there before, always for platonic - as platonic as being shot and then nursed back to health by her could be - reasons.

The room was dark, but with the window-shade open, her bed was cast in a grayish light, outdoor flurries sending shadows across her duvet. On one side of the bed, the covers were undone, but the other side sat fully-made, as though she were expecting someone to come home and lie down alongside her. Though he preferred not to indulge in beds, he still felt a tug to his muscles, a sense that, if he lay down there, he would have the most restful night of his pitiful life. However, she wasn't offering that, so while she set down her glass on her bedside table, one stacked with crosswords and non-fiction as well as a Debbie Macomber that he would be sure to make fun of her over, he softly edged toward the bed, kept his distance but left his presence clear nonetheless.

As she climbed in once more, her movements lethargic and groggy, he took a seat at the very end of her duvet, his hip colliding with the footboard.

"I'm exhausted," she admitted as he exhaled. "I can't even describe it. It's all-encompassing."

He hummed a response softly, his eyes mapping the way her bedspread folded around her body. In the light of a snowstormed evening, her face was angelic and Old Hollywood, the curls of her hair soft and exquisite; he wanted to nuzzle her, to smell the shampoo that she insistently kept in her suitcase, but instead, he kept his distance.

As he turned toward the uncovered window, he watched flakes fall down in the street's soft light, wondered why she hadn't wanted the room to be completely dark. Nowadays, he felt such wonder all too often, wanted to understand all of her little things. At work, she always backed into her parking space even though she never did so anywhere else. When they ordered sandwiches on the road, she always piled hers with vegetables and light sauces even though she could and definitely would eat an entire supreme pizza by herself while camped out in a shitty motel. He liked her little hypocrisies, wanted to know each one so that he could memorize them for later reference; he wanted to know her so fully that maybe, just maybe, she would let her guard down around him.

The revelation - he had a hard time calling it anything else - at first felt strange and hard to label, a simple sensation that left him thinking _oh, there's that again, I like that, or so I guess_  but now that he had a word for it, he found that no other descriptor could explain it. At first, he'd wondered if he could be some kind of first, the original, Patient X, but now, he knew how silly such an idea was, how ridiculous it would be for him to be the first person to ever feel this way. However, he couldn't recognize the sensation as what it was when it began, instead felt something so natural that he couldn't put it into words. It was like describing anger or sadness in scientific terms but also in words that a child would understand; it left him baffled to the point that he repressed it, ignored it as evidence of what it was and insisted that the truth of the matter was impossible to prove. However, he felt it as he sat at the foot of her bed, the sensation obvious now and even more natural, the feeling bubbling up in his chest and making him feel both whole and dreadfully empty. As he watched the soft rise and fall of her chest, slow breaths but not sleeping breaths, he knew he couldn't evade it much longer, knew she would figure it out before he could understand how to quell it, smother it, move on to something more rational.

It had taken a tattoo and a death sentence for him to realize that he was deeply, impossibly in love with her.

And of course he'd fallen in love with a dying woman. His life didn't offer hopes, dreams, lightness. Once she was gone, he knew how he would feel, expected the sensations he had while flipping through TV channels to become all-encompassing and endless. Buddha's greatest fear, he figured; Fox Mulder would La-Z-Boy and Playboy Channel himself to Nirvana, his body going days without food, his mind reaching a state of openness that allowed for media enlightenment. From whatever heaven Scully would find, she would look down on him and shake her head, insist that he should a good night's sleep and be on time for work tomorrow; however, she would never be physically there again, and he didn't want to imagine that, couldn't bear the tragedy of it.

"Mulder?" she asked quietly.

He hummed a response, tried to shake himself of those thoughts.

"Thanks for, um," she said awkwardly, "for the snacks and whatnot. That was sweet."

"You're welcome," he said as he looked forward at her.

"You've been really nice about all of this," she said, and despite the darkness of the room, he swore he could see her cheeks turning pink. "I know that it isn't pretty. I'm sorry that I had to put you through that, but thank you for being eloquent about it."

"Of course," he said softly.

But he didn't want her thanks, not when _being eloquent_  simply meant reading a picture-book in a big, cinematic voice while she laughed - genuinely laughed, the sound easing his heart in so many ways that he felt endless, wondrous, like the luckiest man in the world - at how he spoke. He didn't want praise for letting her lean her wet head against his shoulder after she'd been sick again, her body too tired and too pained to hold her spine upright, not when the wet mark on his shirt felt like a treasure. He didn't want her thanks; instead, he wanted to be able to do it all again and to be alongside her for this, to be her support system, to be her partner in every sense of the word. He didn't want thanks for giving her what he offered wholeheartedly and unabashedly. Though the word _selflessly_  came to mind, he had a hard time seeing such actions as selfless when being alongside her made him feel so warm, so at ease; despite how he never asked for anything in return, he still received the most wonderful things from her, so his actions couldn't possibly be selfless.

"And thanks for staying over," she said quietly. "I'm...I'm more comfortable knowing that someone else is here."

Though she could feel the near-trespass of it, his weight at the foot of her bed felt wholesome and relaxing, a quiet comfort beside her; as she closed her eyes softly, she liked that someone was there to keep her safe no matter how naive a thought that was. As always, she held her fierce independence - and high competence in regard to self-defense - higher than she held a need for others, but having him there, knowing she wouldn't wake up alone, eased her heartbeat and slowed her breaths.

"Do you feel better the morning after?" he asked softly..

She opened her eyes, quirked an eyebrow at him, but somehow, he missed the joke.

"Yeah," she gave, "it's usually easier the next morning. Two days later, I'm back to normal."

Though _normal_ now meant she could do far less than she used to be able to do, she left that part out.

"Is there anything you want to do, anything you want me to do?" he asked.

Her laundry basket was at the side of her bed, but she didn't bother with that, for she didn't want to inconvenience him, and plus, despite his competence in other areas, she doubted  that he knew how to use a washing machine other than his own.

"I want to see the snow," she said, a pipedream at best, but nowadays all of her dreams were pipedreams.

"Okay," he said. "We can sit on the couch, and-"

"No, I meant up-close."

He paused.

"Is that a good idea?"

"I don't really care if it isn't."

He huffed a laugh; she could hear his sweet little smile, so she smiled too.

"There's a lot of things I want to do," she admitted. "I'm just not sure I'll be able to fit them in."

Becoming a wife, a mother, a practicing doctor, those were out, and she would never receive awards or accolades for her work. A mediocre woman, she knew she now was, so even if the snow gave her a cold, she would go out and see it anyway.

"What's something within reach, just barely there?" he asked. "Something possible but near-impossible. Something we can do."

She liked that, _we._  She liked that he wasn't resistant to this, no _oh, you can do anything, Dana, so long as you stay strong!_  like so many others had given her.

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like...I don't know," he said. "A trip to the Empire State Building, or a day in the botanical gardens here. Something we can do. Something you _want_  to do."

Taking a deep breath, she weighed her options but found that she wanted nothing within reach. A baby, a trip to the Louvre, a chance to ski the Swiss Alps - she barely even knew how to ski in the first place - those were gone from her now. Of course, thinking of what she couldn't have was fruitless, but it was nearly impossible to think of anything she _could_  have. She needed to build her wants around a fewer-than-six-months timeline, biweekly chemotherapy, her job, and her efforts to please her family; that left little room for frivolities while she wasn't even a frivolous person in the first place.

But the botanical gardens sounded nice. A big cup of coffee too, the kind she could get at a little artisanal cafe where the baristas know customers by name and made little art, like swans and hearts, out of foamed milk. She wanted to get in contact with Charlie again though she wasn't holding her breath on that one. At some point, she figured she would send a grandiose check to the American Cancer Society, one last huzzah of her government salary. She wanted to give her books away as gifts, but she doubted any of her friends, what few remained, would want them. Oh, and she wanted to go to the ocean in the heart of summer, to feel saltwater and sand between her toes one last time while a brilliant sunset shone before her.

But he looked at her with an intensity of _whatever you ask for, I will give_ , so she took a deep breath. Though she knew Mulder liked quirky cafes, and though she figured he could help her with Charlie, and though she knew he would jet her down to Florida on a moment's notice - _it's a case, Scully, I swear, about this...beach monster, he's really threatening, killed ten guys on this one beach, but - oh! Goodness, I swear it's safe there, but we have to check it out, Scully, right down there at the beach, but not right now, a little later, maybe when the sun goes down - yes, Scully, this is most definitely for a case, I'm not making that up_  - she couldn't ask those things of him. He was not her servant in near-martyrdom; he was a man, her partner, someone she deeply trusted, and he deserved more than to be a henchman for her final wishes, so she offered what she knew he could supply with ease, what she, at her core, needed most from him.

"Love," she said. "Pure, unabashed love. That's all I want."

He nodded softly, and as she looked away from him, as she closed her eyes once more, she hoped he would stay there until she fell asleep. She wondered how the storm was progressing outside, if children were mourning _why not on Monday when we could've had a snow day?_ yet. Shifting softly, he stayed for a while, her bedroom dark save for the light through the window, and as he sat there, she contemplated what was on his mind, what he could be thinking about. _You,_  she figured, but that was as generic with him as the topic _aliens_  was; she wanted something more specific, more pinpointed, more real.

While she fell half-asleep, he stood, padded softly out of her bedroom, closed the door with quiet motions. Then, she was alone, her painful body swirling into sleep, the bed feeling oddly vacant in his absence. 


End file.
